Nation of Nations 3/e Davidson, Gienapp, Heyrman, Lytle, and Stoff
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THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE

he religious changes of the Second Great Awakening, the romantic movement, the development of a democratic political culture, and the creation of a domestic national market fundamentally transformed the United States in the years after 1815. These changes were not limited to the North but affected the South as well, often in dramatic ways. Indeed, as we have seen, it was the rapid expansion of cotton production in the South that propelled the country's explosive economic growth in the 1820s and the 1830s, and slaveholders and slaves had been tied to the international market well before the nineteenth century. But the impact of these developments on the two sections was not uniform, and the abolition of slavery in the northern states after the Revolution heightened southern distinctiveness. In important ways southern values and culture increasingly diverged from the rest of the country. The conflict between nationalism and sectionalism was an increasing important aspect of southern--and American--history in the years after 1820.

OVERVIEW

This chapter examines the values, social structure, and institutions of the Old South--that is, the South before the Civil War. Despite the popular image of the region as a land of elegant planters and obedient slaves, the Old South was a much more complex society. The chapter begins with four case studies that illustrate the diversity of southern life. By exploring the complexity of society in the Old South, the introduction shows some of the complicated ways in which white and black southerners, slaveholders and yeomen farm families lived together.

The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom

Cotton was not the only crop grown in the South, but it was the crop that fueled the southern economy and drove the slave population steadily westward and southward. As cotton prices boomed on the world market and the southern Indian tribes were forcibly removed, Southerners poured into the fresh lands of the Southwest, eager to take advantage of the opportunity symbolized by cotton bales and slaves. A boom mentality gripped Southerners in the Cotton Kingdom, and cotton quickly became the region's major staple crop. At the same time, the upper South became more diversified agriculturally, as exhausted soils encouraged planters and farmers to switch to new crops, especially wheat. These crops required less slave labor, and surplus slaves from the upper South were annually sold to sugar, cotton, and rice planters in the lower South.

The prosperity of southern agriculture helped keep the South overwhelmingly rural. Few cities and towns developed, and southern wealth depended heavily on agricultural exports. The lack of cities, the low population density, and slavery hindered the development of a domestic market to stimulate economic growth, and the South lagged well behind the rest of the nation in manufacturing.

Slaves and plantations were not found everywhere in the South. Instead, they were most frequently found where good agricultural land had a ready access to market. Slaves were concentrated along the old eastern seaboard (the Tidewater) and in the new plantation areas of the Deep South. Other than white farm families, slavery was the major source of agricultural labor in the Old South. It was a highly profitable investment and made the plantation system possible.

Class Structure of the White South

At the top of the class structure of the Old South were slaveowners. Only one white southerner in four belonged to a slaveowning family, and less than 1 percent were members of the wealthy planter class, who had 50 or more slaves. Most slaveowners owned only a few slaves. The refined plantation society of the Tidewater, with its elegant homes and strong sense of family, was much different from the raw society found on the cotton frontier, where planters often lived in unpretentious homes and aggressive business tactics were the norm.

Plantations were complex business operations managed by the master. Defenders of slavery stressed the role of paternalism when discussing the relationship between the planter and slaves, but this was more the ideal than reality. Plantation mistresses also had important duties and responsibilities and hardly led lives of leisure. Some women felt overwhelmed by these duties, and a number complained of their lack of legal rights and especially the sexual relationships between white men and slave women, but they hardly suffered from the same oppression as slaves.

The majority of southern whites were non-slaveowning independent yeoman farmers, who owned their own farm and worked it with their family labor. They formed the middle class of the South. Though yeoman farmers were not poor, they were hurt socially and economically by slavery. Nevertheless they supported the institution out of racism and deeply ingrained fears of emancipation. At the bottom of white society were the poor whites, who were poverty stricken and disdained by other southern whites. Unlike the more prosperous yeoman farmers, the poor whites resented planters, but they disliked blacks even more intensely and were thus strongly opposed to emancipation.

The Peculiar Institution

Most black southerners were enslaved. They worked long hours and were subject to strict discipline, including physical punishment with a whip. Their standard of living was generally below that of workers in the North: conditions varied widely, but in general they had a monotonous diet, crude housing, coarse and sometimes inadequate clothing, and limited medical care. As a result, slaves had a shorter life expectancy than whites, and the rate of infant mortality was double that among whites. Slaves resisted the institution in many ways --some overt, most subtle--but power still rested in the hands of the owner and the overseer. The most famous slave revolt was led by Nat Turner, a Virginia slave preacher, in 1831. Most slaves resisted in less dramatic ways by destroying or stealing property, working poorly, and running away. Slavery taught slaves to distrust whites and hide their true feelings in the presence of whites.

Slave Culture

Excluded from white society, slaves developed their own culture that helped them cope with the pressures of bondage. They tried to preserve a sense of family, sang songs that expressed their joy and sorrow as a people, and most important, developed a Christianity of their own that emphasized their dignity as a people and promised them release from the pain of bondage. Slave songs, both spiritual and secular, expressed their innermost feelings, often in symbolic ways, as did folk tales, which in their moral lessons taught young slaves how to survive in a crushing institution like slavery. Slaves were divided by occupations and color, but white racism and the oppression of slavery drove slaves together in a common bond.

Free African-Americans were overwhelmingly located in the upper South and were the most urban group in southern society. They were subject to discrimination, enjoyed few economic opportunities, and were for the most part very poor. Laws restricting their activities grew more stringent over time. They were trapped in a society that had no place for them; they were not slaves, but neither were they truly free.

Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery

As slavery came increasingly under attack, white southerners rallied to defend their "peculiar institution." In 1832, in the aftermath of Nat Turner's rebellion, the Virginia legislature debated the future of slavery. In the end the majority opted to take no action. This was the last full-scale consideration of slavery in a southern state before the Civil War. In the ensuing years, southern writers developed a series of arguments to defend slavery. These were directed at southern whites, and especially slaveowners, to ease their consciences. This movement also required southern politicians to defend slavery, and in national campaigns each party tried to charge the other with abolitionism. By 1830, the South had developed a regional identity with some distinct cultural features. But as long as slavery was not a national political issue, the South, with its belief in democracy and white equality and opportunity, remained firmly within the American tradition.

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